Niner and Contour ranked on Forbes’ ‘Most Promising Companies’

Forbes Magazine is known for their rankings of the richest individuals, the "most powerful people" and more. Their latest ranking of the "most promising companies" includes two brands from the outdoors industry: Niner Bikes (No. 63) and Contour Electronics (No. 14).

How do they come up with these rankings?

To sharpen our search, FORBES teamed up with CB Insights, a New York City-based data firm that tracks investment in high-growth private companies. With $650,000 in grants from the National Science Foundation, CB Insights has developed complex software called Mosaic to help lenders and investors dole out capital more efficiently. We married Mosaic’s data-crunching with old-fashioned reporting to assemble a list of up-and-comers with big growth potential.

Mosaic mines data from 30,000 sources (from press releases and social networks to job boards and court filings) to come up with one score that measures a company’s potential. Think of it as the SAT score for private companies—something that lenders, investors and vendors can use to quickly gauge whom they want to do business with.